


The Little Girl in the Mirror

by itsfaberrytaboo (orphan_account)



Series: Color the Sky [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Age Play, Established Relationship, F/F, Natasha Needs a Hug, Non-Sexual Age Play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-13
Updated: 2016-03-13
Packaged: 2018-05-26 09:46:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6233812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/itsfaberrytaboo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I expect us to talk about whatever the hell that was yesterday, that’s what I expect you to say! For us to talk like reasonable adults!”</p><p>“What if I don’t want to be a reasonable adult?!”</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Little Girl in the Mirror

It all comes crashing down with hair bows.

Natasha knows that she doesn’t have to do her own shopping. She can tell JARVIS everything she needs and an hour or two later, a flushed-faced and out of breath runner appears at her door, arms laden to overflowing. But Natasha… likes to shop. She likes to wheel her cart through every aisle, taking her time to look at everything. What she can afford, what she can’t. Picking out laundry detergent in a scent she likes is so very mundane, almost boring to the average person. Natasha Romanoff isn’t average, though, and for someone who had gone from no choices at all to every choice in the world, lavender-scented laundry detergent is an amazement.

She finds the bows in a Halloween display, hanging at the end of one of the aisles. Natasha has, for the last two visits, allowed herself to walk around the periphery of first the toy section, then the babies’ section, then the little girls’. She feels most comfortable in the baby section, with its powdery scent and its mostly muted colors. It’s not diapers or pacifiers she wants, but she adores the feel of the soft flannel blankets in her fingertips, the cute plush duckies and the loud, merry toys. She likes the girls’ section because of the plastic bangles and necklaces, and the socks. Especially the socks. Natasha Romanoff has never considered herself especially girly, but she realizes rather quickly that she likes lacy socks. Knee socks and fluffy socks with designs all over them.

The hair bows are black ribbon, twisted into the shape of a spider, topped with its own little orange and black polka-dotted bow. There are two of them, clipped to an orange paper card; it’s the only set left on the rack. She reaches her fingers to touch them, feeling the silkiness of the ribbon and watching as the card swings back and forth on the little hanger.

They’re $2.99.

She ponders, standing for a minute, until someone with a full cart clears their throat and Natasha realizes she’s blocking their way. She apologizes, yanks the bows off the hanger before she knows truly what she’s doing, and they join a small pile of plain white paper, lavender laundry detergent, bread, and soup as she moves away.

Later that evening Natasha stands in front of the mirror and looks at herself, the bows resting on the sink. She had her hair cut just last week; it hangs in bouncy curls an inch or two below her ears. Maria loves it; she’d let out a quiet gasp of excitement when she’d seen her.  It had made Natasha smile, feel pleased. As if she’d done something… good, to make Maria happy.

She’s dug through all of her clothes and found a pair of grey and pink fleecy pants, and a tee-shirt with a dinosaur on it that Cap had bought her two months ago. The pants are entirely too hot; Natasha’s happier sleeping in just the shirt and her underwear. But the feel of the soft material against her legs, and the lightness of the tee-shirt, plus her hair… Natasha isn’t sure she recognizes the girl staring back at her from the mirror.

It takes one motion of her hand, and one of the clips tucks her hair behind her ear. Natasha tilts her head and grins. She pins the second side up with the other hair bow, and she sees herself blushing pink, biting her lower lip.

She lifts her hand and waves.

The little girl in the mirror waves back.

Agent Scruff is sitting on Natasha’s bed, his lopsided grin seeming to approve. She’s left him on the bed since Maria bought him for her that weekend, but that doesn’t mean that Natasha hasn’t climbed into bed and snuggled with him.

She’s done that almost every night, that she doesn’t spend with Maria. Oh, true, snuggling with Maria is Natasha’s favorite thing in the world – though she’s threatened to punch Steve in the nose for teasing her about that. Former Russian assassin Natalia Alianovna Romanova, going all gooey over the director of SHIELD. It’s _gross_ , really, she thinks, how far she’s fallen. That’s what the Red Room would think, anyway. Gross that she’s sunk so low as to actually _enjoy_ being held in the arms of what should be an enemy.

But she can’t help it. Natasha feels as if she lives for those nights that she gets to spend with Maria, that soft, quiet time just before she falls asleep. It’s always taken Natasha longer to fall asleep than it does Maria, even those nights just after Maria has utterly and completely, _pleasantly_ worn her out. They always fall asleep in the same position: facing each other, with Maria’s arms tightly wrapped around Natasha and Natasha curled under her chin. She hadn’t liked that idea at first; but there was just something about waking up with her face pressed into Maria, feeling the woman’s arms strong and protective around her, that Natasha had slowly begun to crave when they were apart.

And when they are apart, Scruff is there when Natasha wakes up cold and sweating from some brief flash of mind that is either a nightmare or a memory. For a brief second she’ll think she can still feel the coldness of a handcuff against her wrist, but then she can curl tighter into herself and around the teddy bear, and she knows that she’s safe. Scruff is losing his new-toy stiffness (or what she thinks must be that, it isn’t like she’s ever had a toy before), and he’s just the right softness to be squished in her arms, his fur nuzzled into. Natasha can breathe in, thinking of the pink fabric heart that is tucked inside her “new friend,” and she doesn’t miss Maria quite as much.

Now she’s in her pink and grey fleece pajama pants, the shirt that her favorite fossil has bought, with her hair pinned back with spider bows. Natasha grabs Scruff up by his paw, impulsively giving him a hug before she slides down onto the floor and reaches under the bed.

“Do you want to color, Agent?” she asks, tugging the cardboard chest out from its spot. “I got us some pictures of bears. Just like you!”

Her voice sounds awkward, too loud in her (relatively) small apartment. She feels self-conscious, but Natasha pushes it down by stretching herself out on her stomach as she rifles through the chest to find the coloring pages she’d printed out the day before. She knows she could buy books, but there’s a different kind of control to be had, going to the library and printing out her own. It’s anonymous, and she can make her own choices about what she wants to color.

It’s hard to hold the crayons now; they’re too small for her hands and the paper has been torn off all of them. She should buy new ones, but these are special to Natasha. She almost mourns the demise of the glittery sticks of wax she found in that little school in Russia. They’re just _crayons_ , she tells herself with a roll of her eyes, but she wouldn’t be able to bring herself to throw them away.

She tucks Scruff into the crook of her arm as she selects a picture. It’s a teddy bear family: mom, dad, and two baby bears. She sort of wishes it was two mommy bears, but that’d be pushing her luck, Natasha supposes. She takes a deep breath, and picks up a crayon. She can feel her mind slipping away with the first touch of crayon to paper. Her body relaxes; the hum of the air conditioner around her fades away into an almost gentle lullaby. She focuses intently on the paper, determined, this time, to stay between the lines.

She doesn’t hear the door open and close, or the footsteps that echo on the floor.

She does, however, hear the voice.

“Nat? What’re you doing down there, baby?”

Purple streaks across the page, ruining the picture with a jagged line, as Natasha is jerked out of herself, like a harsh alarm clock pulling her from sleep.

Maria looks down at her, an amused smile on her face.

With one hand, Natasha shoves everything under the bed. Scruff, paper, crayons, her chest with the Captain America stickers, everything. She leaps to her feet, tearing the clips from her head, and taking some of her hair along with it. Her hands tremble.

“Don’t you ever knock?” she snaps.

But, well, no, Maria doesn’t ever knock. Most of the time JARVIS announces her presence, but most of the time, Natasha just doesn’t care when she comes in. It’s kind of a standing agreement that they’ve developed: unless one of them says otherwise, it’s okay to come in without knocking. They’re just that comfortable with each other.

Or at least, they were. Natasha suddenly thinks that she wants to amend this part of the relationship. She’ll _have_ to.

Now Maria is frowning at her, taken aback by the bitter tone in Natasha’s voice. She must’ve gone to her own apartment and changed after work; she’s wearing a tank top and a pair of jeans instead of her usual suit and high heels. She’s gorgeous, she will always be gorgeous, and for some reason, that makes Natasha even more angry.

“I didn’t think you’d be busy tonight,” Maria is saying. She’s glancing down at the floor, and Natasha kicks the wayward crayon under the bed. “I thought we could go out to dinner.”

“I don’t feel like dinner.”

“Okay, do you want me to order in or—“

“I don’t _want_ anything to _eat_ , Maria!”

“Natasha, what’s gotten into you?” Maria exclaims, seemingly completely mystified by this change in her girlfriend.

“Nothing has gotten into me; I just don’t appreciate you sneaking up on me like that. Anybody else and it would’ve gotten them _killed_.”

Maria raises an eyebrow. “Funny, I thought I wasn’t anybody else.”

Natasha sighs and runs her hand over her head, trying to ease the sting of having ripped out some of her hair. The knowledge that Maria has seen, that she might know, is unsettling. Natasha looks up at her, suddenly even more aware of their height difference than she thinks she’s ever been.

“Can you just go?”

Her girlfriend’s mouth opens a little in shock. “Nat,” she tries, taking on that soft tone that usually Natasha loves. It means gentleness, it means caring. It means Maria will sit and listen to anything that Natasha has to say, even when they’re frustrated and arguing.

At that moment, Natasha hates it, because she doesn’t know how to explain _this_.

“Did you have a bad day, honey? Did something happen? Or did Tony say something, because if he did you know I’ll—“

“No, I didn’t have a bad day,” Natasha says wearily. “Nothing happened, and I haven’t even seen Tony today. I just want to be alone, Maria.”

“But—“

“Maria, for god’s sake, please, just go.”

Natasha knows the words hurt, because without a mother, and with a father who never loved her, Maria might as well be an orphan herself. She’s the bitchiest bitch that ever lived, Natasha thinks, for sending Maria away. Maria’s eyes should never be shiny like that; there should only ever be happy tears. But that stupid Captain America chest hangs like an albatross around Natasha’s neck. She folds her arms and turns away.

Seconds later, she hears the door to her apartment open and close.

Natasha slumps to the floor, digging back under the bed for the crayons and papers, for Agent Scruff. She stares at the bear, at his sarcastic little grin, the black eyepatch that reminds her of the old friend she once thought she’d lost forever. She wishes Nick was there, even though there’s no way he would ever understand any of this.

Not to mention he’d probably yell at her for dating Hill and putting them both in more danger. But there’s a part of Natasha that thinks Nick would actually approve. He was one of the few that treated Natasha like she was human, in spite of her past. Deserving of love, no matter what she’d done when she was a child and thought the world was meant to work how she had been taught.

Assassinations and seduction. Murder. Never softness. Never love.

On top of the sheaf of papers tucked inside the chest is that first picture, drawn on the back of a map. Natasha looks at it, runs her fingers over the triangle mountains and the bright nearly neon blue water. Her hands ache, strangely, for the peace she’d felt when she’d drawn it. How the world had slipped away and it was just her, drawing and coloring and not having to worry about anything but just being calm and happy.

With a frustrated grunt, Natasha rips the picture in half and shoves it back into the chest.

“I’m sorry,” she says to Agent Scruff as she pushes him down onto the papers and closes the cardboard box over him, latches it. Shoves her bear and her crayons, her pictures, under the bed, as far as she can until it touches the wall on the other side.

She should call Maria, she knows. Tell her that she’s sorry. Try to explain everything, even though Natasha knows, or at least is desperately afraid, that it will mean the end of it all. Because how can Maria possibly understand this? Natasha isn’t even sure she understands it herself, even though she’s lugged her laptop to a coffee shop so she’ll be off the SHIELD servers, and hides herself in a back corner so no one can see her screen while she searches for… whatever this is that she’s doing.

Nothing that she reads brings her anywhere closer to understanding.

She’ll find Maria tomorrow, Natasha thinks. It’s not like she doesn’t know where she works. She’ll make up something about having a bad day, even if she’d said she hadn’t. Maria will be understanding, will be loving. Forgiving.

Everything Natasha doesn’t deserve.

She spends the rest of the night sat up against her headboard, trying to convince herself that Agent Scruff is just fine without her. A teddy bear can’t be lonely inside a cardboard box, unlike a girl in a dinosaur tee-shirt with tears on her cheeks.

The next morning, she doesn’t bother with coffee or breakfast. She heads straight for Maria’s office.

Thankfully, the director is alone, though the stony look she gives Natasha when she sees her is enough for the Black Widow to wish that all of the Avengers were there. At least then Maria wouldn’t kill her.

“Do you need something, Agent?”

She looks tired, upset. The words are meant to be harsh, but instead they come out sad and confused.

Natasha shrugs. “Just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

It’s lame, and Maria scoffs.

“I have a lot of work to do, and I think I pulled a muscle yesterday sparring with Clint, but other than that… no. No, I’m not okay.”

“Yeah. I kind of figured you wouldn’t be.”

“Mm-hm.”

They’re at a stalemate, and Natasha huffs. “I’m sorry, all right? What do you expect me to say?”

“I expect us to talk about whatever the hell that was yesterday, that’s what I expect you to say! For us to talk like reasonable adults!”

“What if I don’t want to be a reasonable adult?!”

Natasha sighs at herself, pressing her palm to her forehead. Of all the idiotic things to say, she thinks, and Maria looks even more confused.

“What does that even mean?”

“Trust me, I have no idea,” Natasha answers. She takes a step forward into Maria’s office.

“Come over tonight?” she asks softly. “You don’t even have to knock.”

She offers Maria a half-hearted smile; the director doesn’t respond.

“Just… bring burgers, okay? Bring burgers and I’ll be a reasonable adult and talk about the… crap that’s been rattling around in my head. I promise.”

“Okay.” Maria hesitates. “Nat… are we…”

The pause hurts Natasha in ways she never thought possible. The strong director of SHIELD battles all the time with the abandoned little girl who sometimes thought she’d still end up losing the things, the people, she loves.

It makes Natasha cross the floor in quick strides, to wrap her arms around Maria and hug her closer. Her girlfriend is stiff at first before she relaxes and hugs her in return.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Natasha promises with a kiss to her lips, a nuzzle of her nose to Maria’s cheek. It’s a gesture they’d discovered by accident, a motion that Maria loves, and it makes her smile a little. Natasha smiles back. “Burgers later, all right, babe?”

“Cheeseburger, no mustard?” Maria says, and Natasha chuckles.

“You know me so well.”

She winks, and in spite of her nervousness for what is to come, she saunters away, letting her hips sway because she knows Maria is helpless to look away when that happens.

At half past six the disembodied voice in her apartment distracts Natasha from her thoughts.

“Director Hill has arrived, Agent Romanoff.”

“Did you take a day off last night or something?” she asks, rising up from the edge of her bed, where she’s been sat for the last hour.

“I’m afraid I don’t know to what you’re referring, Agent.”

“Yeah, of course you don’t.” Natasha half-believed that JARVIS hadn’t alerted her to Maria’s presence yesterday on purpose.

Maria looks just as nervous as Natasha feels, but she still smiles when she sees her, and places the fast food bags on the kitchen counter.

“Hey.”

“Hey,” Natasha greets her. She moves to hug her again, encouraged when Maria practically melts into her embrace.

“I’m sorry about last night. I was a complete asshole, and I should’ve—“

Maria kisses her quiet for a moment. “You going to tell me what it was all about?”

Natasha nods. “Now, or you want to wait till after dinner?”

“Well, I hate to leave a good cheeseburger just sitting around, but I want to know what’s wrong, Nat.”

“Nothing’s really wrong,” Natasha says with a shrug, taking Maria’s hand and leading her into the bedroom.

“Natasha, I don’t want to—“

“We’re not,” Natasha reassures her. “Just talk.”

She looks at Maria, into her concerned blue eyes, and she realizes that it’s now or never. Better that Maria leaves her before Natasha gets even deeper than she already is. She squeezes Maria’s hand and pulls her onto the floor next to Natasha’s bed.

Natasha reaches and pulls out the cardboard chest. “Nothing’s really wrong,” she says again as she opens it. Agent Scruff smiles up at her and she grins back, taking him out and giving him a quick cuddle. She grimaces when she sees the ripped map-picture; she pulls it free from the box and smooths the two halves as best she can.

Maria is very still sat next to her, watching and listening.

The hair bows are next, almost like little exclamation points to punctuate Natasha’s words, rapid and rushed now, as if a dam has broken.

“I like to color,” she says. “I found crayons… on that op in Russia and I don’t know, I just… did this picture.” She points to the torn mountains. “It calms me down. Like you do. Not as good as you do though.”

She smiles at Maria, reaches out to take her hand again before she continues. “But it’s more than that, I think? I like to color and I like… I love Agent Scruff. I sleep with him, when you’re not here. He makes me feel safe. He makes me feel… good. I mean, like a good person?” She’s stumbling over her sentences, her thoughts racing too fast for her words.

Maria, to her credit, seems to be hanging on to everything Natasha is saying.

“I bought these bows at the store and I like to wear them, and I like those pajama pants and the shirt I had on, you know Steve got that for me, ‘cause I made a joke about him being a fossil.”

“Why do you like… all of this?” Maria gestures, and Natasha thinks for a minute.

“I think… I like to feel small,” she finally said, slowly, not looking at Maria now. “I looked it up on the internet and it’s this thing, I guess. Some people – adults – like to pretend that they’re little kids. They like to dress up like a little kid or play with dolls or toys. Or color. I never… got to do any of that stuff.”

“So this lets you have a childhood, I guess?”

“I guess,” Natasha agrees. Maria has found the stubs of crayons; she’s rolling one back and forth in her free hand. Natasha feels strangely protective of them, of her secret; she wants to snatch it back from Maria but she stops herself.

“I just feel different when I do things like that. When I color or when I hold Agent Scruff or just have bows in my hair. I don’t feel like Natasha Romanoff. It’s like… maybe I’m just Natalia Romanova, or who I would’ve been if I hadn’t… you know.”

“Is it like a sex thing?” Maria asks bluntly. “I mean you don’t want to dress up like a little kid and then me—“

“No!” Natasha hurries to say. “God no, it has nothing to do with that.” She shakes her head. “The stuff I read, some people just want to dress like a little girl and snuggle.”  It sounds ridiculous, when she says it out loud. “They just want to be protected and taken care of. When I play, that’s what it’s called, I think, I don’t have to worry about anything. I worry so much, Maria, about everything.”

Her voice catches, comes out squeaky and unrefined; she’s not used to talking about herself, her feelings, this way. Or at all. Natasha is startled when Maria takes her hand away and wraps her arm around her waist.

“I know you do, sweetheart.”

“And I’ve done some pretty bad, stuff, I—“

“Natasha, don’t.”

“No, I have,” Natasha insists. “I know it doesn’t matter to you anymore, and I’m an Avenger now, but I just want to forget about it. Forget that I did all that stuff and just be a good… a good…”

“A good girl,” Maria finishes, and Natasha nods.

“Yeah. But then you walked in on me yesterday and I panicked, because I thought, I’m a freak. I’m a freak and you’re going to leave.”

“Natasha.” Maria is shaking her head. “I know who you’ve been, and I haven’t left.” The statement, strange as it is, is reassuring. “Something like this isn’t going to force me away, you know.”

“It isn’t?” She’s not sure why it should come as such a shock, but it does.

“I don’t understand it,” Maria says honestly, and Natasha is grateful that, most of the time, Maria Hill is incapable of telling a lie – the whole Nick-Fury-is-dead incident notwithstanding.

“I don’t understand it, and I’m probably going to have to do some reading up, but… I support you. If this is something you need to do, then we’ll figure it out. As long as you don’t try to shut me off again like you did last night.”

_We’ll figure it out._

“You mean it?”

“I mean it.”

“You don’t think I’m a freak who needs therapy?” Natasha says doubtfully, searching her girlfriend’s face for any sign of trouble.

Instead, there’s only a twinkle in her eye as Maria says, “Oh, you definitely need therapy, Romanov, but not about this.”

Natasha shoves at her shoulder, and Maria laughs, then grows serious. “Promise you won’t shut me out.”

“I won’t,” Natasha says, and kisses her to seal the deal.

Maria doesn’t understand, but there’s that spark of hope, that realization that she is going to _try_.

She’s left once again wondering how she got so lucky, as Maria tugs her to her feet and into the kitchen for dinner.

That night Natasha is restless, even tucked into Maria’s arms. She should be exhausted, because once again Maria has made Natasha moan her name so many times she’s lost count. But she can’t calm her mind down, can’t stop thinking about the fact that they had actually talked and Maria wasn’t gone. She is pressed warm and soft against Natasha’s body, her hand tangled in Natasha’s hair. It still makes her edgy, wondering if it had all been a dream, if Natasha will wake up in the morning and will find that she and Maria were no longer a thing, or hadn’t ever been together to begin with.

The idea makes her want to cry, and she sniffs a little.

“Nat.”

Maria is sleepy, and Natasha smiles. “Yeah.”

“Get the bear.”

“Huh?”

“I am exhausted, sweetheart, if it’ll help you sleep get Agent Scruff.”

She wants to, more than anything, but Natasha doesn’t move. She can’t process this, that not only does Maria support her but she’s okay with a _teddy bear_ sharing the bed.

“Are you sure?”

“Natasha.”

“All right, all right,” her girlfriend grumbles, because the bed is soft and comfortable and even Agent Scruff is barely enticing enough for Natasha to want to leave the comfort of Maria’s arms. She retrieves the bear and slips back into bed, holding him loosely in her arms as she lays with her back to Maria.

She feels Maria’s hand on her hip, pushing so that Natasha has to turn to face her, the bear held in between them.

“You know the rules,” Maria says, half-asleep, and Natasha quirks an eyebrow.

“Actually I didn’t know that was a _rule_.”

Maria shifts Natasha closer, squishing the bear closer to her girlfriend as she holds Natasha under her chin.

“Is now.”

“Whatever you say, Director Hill.”

She feels her mind begin to settle, can feel that easing-away that happens whenever she holds Agent Scruff, multiplied because she is holding her teddy bear and Maria is snuggling her. Natasha yawns and closes her eyes.

She’s nearly asleep when she hears the words, catches them on the edge of her consciousness.

“Good girl.”

Maria is gone when Natasha wakes up in the morning. It’s disappointing, but it’s what comes with dating the director. Natasha isn’t _used_ to it, but it is what it is. And besides, she’s woken up in her bed with Agent Scruff laid on the pillow next to her, and the covers tucked lovingly around her. Natasha stretches out happily and stays there for as long as she can, until she knows she has to get up and face whatever the day will bring her next.

She pulls on her jeans and hoodie and stumbles into the kitchen. “Coffee,” she says to herself, a little grumpily. She never has been a morning person, unlike Maria who is up nearly every day at 5 a.m.

“I need coffee.”

She stops in her tracks, stood in the doorway leading to the kitchen. Maria has been out shopping, she realizes, as Natasha’s wide eyes take in the stack of new coloring books on the table. Next to them is a 64-pack of crayons, and next to _those_ is a smaller pack of jumbo glitter crayons. Just right for… smaller hands, Natasha thinks.

She imagines herself sat at the table, coloring while Maria works on her latest intelligence report. She can feel the smoothness of the crayons in her hands, the warmth of Maria next to her. The safety.

 _I don’t understand it, but I support you_.

She moves to take out the cream for her coffee, but is stopped again. Natasha shakes her head, grins, and laughs.

A picture of the bright blue sky, of mountains and water, has been carefully taped back together, held up on the refrigerator by two brand-new magnets.

Shaped like hearts.


End file.
